Scorned

by Tyffani Clark Kemp

  “Your friends are suffering because of you.” Perdita stood in the doorway, and what struck me as odd was the intensity with which I could feel her presence. I’d never felt her like this before. She wasn’t in my head, it was just her presence. “I’m impressed,” she said to me. She was leaning against the wall inspecting her fingers like she did this kind of thing every day. And maybe she did. “How did you heal yourself?” she asked.

  I shrugged and it wasn’t a complete lie. “I don’t really know.”

  “Oh, come now. You know something. Bring him!” She said to someone behind her back and Tate came around the corner with Pierce in tow. There was no leash or shackles, just a woman leading a man into the room, but there was something missing from Tate’s eyes. The girl I knew was gone, replaced by Perdita’s control.

  Perdita laughed. “I just felt your blood pressure spike. Interesting.” She peeled herself away from the wall and came into the room. “Here kitty, kitty.” All of the shape shifters came through the door a moment later, half in human form, the other half in animal form. “I’m not sure which distresses you more. Seeing your friend under my control or seeing your man hauled about like a pet. I can see you don’t much care for the animals though.”

  “That’s not true,” I said.

  “Yes, this is strange for me. You do not like this man,” she tipped Eddy’s jaguar chin up with a long, manicured fingernail and he growled. "Yet you don’t want me to hurt him.” Perdita caressed his head before she gave him a powerful smack and sent him sprawling. The other jaguars, human and animal, growled. “Oh, shut up!” They shut up mid-growl.

  Perdita went to Pierce. “This one,” she said, “causes you great distress.” She raked her nails down his chest and over his healing scars, not hard enough to break the skin but hard enough to hurt. Pierce didn’t even flinch. Perdita chuckled and sauntered over to me. She tipped my chin up with her finger and tsked. “Such a weak, ugly little thing.”

  I felt my blood pressure rise another notch and she laughed. “You’re getting angry. I wonder how angry you must get before you try something heroic.” She paused. “I wonder what it takes to make you angry. I think I know.” The way she said it sounded like she knew me too well, as if we’d been friends for some time.

  Perdita marched over to Pierce and wagged her hips seductively. “He is a sexy man. Maybe I will take him to replace the one you stole from me.” She ran her hands over his chest and down his body until one lingered dangerously close to his crotch. With a look over her shoulder at me and a sly grin, she grabbed his manhood through his sweat pants, not to hurt but to arouse. Pierce refused to look at her, but he wouldn’t look at me either and I knew he was feeling things he didn’t want to. Anger washed over me like a hot wind and it filled the room. Perdita threw her head back and laughed.

  “Is that all it takes?” she asked. She straightened, but her mouth went for Pierce’s before anyone knew what was about to happen. The room went still as she kissed him and it took a moment for me to get angry. When I did, I couldn’t hold back any longer.

  Scorching wind filled the room before I realized what was happening and everything came into perfect focus. Every nuance, every shadow, every dust mogul in the room became clear to me, and when Perdita pulled back from her kiss with Pierce, her eyes registered something I hadn’t seen on her before. Fear.

  “He’s mine,” I said, and my voice didn’t sound like my own. “That was too far.”

  I crossed the room to Perdita as the wind blows from one side of the world to the other and had her by the neck before she knew I’d moved. I felt her pulse under my hand and the energy with which she lived off. She’d fed. She was strong, but I was angry.

  “I want your life,” I said softly into her ear, “for touching my Pierce. No one touches him but me.” My jaw quivered with anger, my voice shook from holding back, so I stopped holding back. I let go and I let out everything that I was trying to keep in.

  And I let in things I didn’t know I was keeping out.

  The veins in Perdita’s neck turned black and she screamed as I felt her energy rush into me. It was like that high you get when you consume too much caffeine, but one hundred times better. It was like a wind rushing in your face so hard you can’t breathe, like drinking an ice cold glass of water after being parched in the desert. I felt her energy fill me and it made me want to laugh, so I did.

  “Stop!” I heard Roman’s shouts, but I didn’t know how to stop and I didn’t want to. No one tried to rip me from her, so I kept going.

  Perdita’s face and body began to shrivel so the dress no longer fit her busty form. She continued to scream and die until there were no lungs left for her to scream, but she kept working her leathery jaw. The room fell blessedly, eerily quiet. There was no energy left for me to consume and the dress fell from her emaciated body. And then, she was gone. No blood, no flesh, no bones. No carcass left to bury.

  I looked down at that pile of lovely cloth, then around the room at the people in it and said, “I’m hungry.” My voice was low and held a hint of the vanished vampire’s accent. All eyes were on me.

  “Don’t let her feed.” Roman’s voice was weak. “Don’t let her taste blood or we’ll lose her forever.”

  “What are you babbling about, old man?” I asked, and turned so quickly that it left me dizzy. I licked my lips and nicked my tongue. Only then, did I notice the extra razor sharp teeth in my mouth. I cocked my head to the side. “What’s happened?” I asked, but there was no emotion to my voice. “Have I become a vampire?”

  Roman shook his head. “No, but you’ve absorbed her. You’ve taken on some of her attributes, changed your DNA. Most of it will go away, the teeth, the bloodlust, but there will be some things you will endure forever. What those things are, we won’t know until they happen.”

  “I’m hungry. Why can’t I have blood?”

  “Because you don’t really want it. It’s the vampire talking, not you. You’re not in your right mind, and if you taste blood you will go crazy. You’ll lose your sanity and you will never get it back.”

  “What if I don’t care?”

  “You do care,” Roman said, and tried to push himself up. “You will care.”

  I sniffed the air and it smelled so good, like the vampire equivalent of a barbecue. “It’s so good,” I said softly. “How do you do this every day?”

  “I didn’t have to until I met you.”

  I turned to Pierce. “You smell amazing.” I sniffed his neck and it was my Pierce with the added bonus of blood and the negativity of Perdita’s stench on him. “I should kill you for kissing her.”

  “She kissed me.”

  “Yeah. That’s what they all say.”

  “She has no reasoning,” Roman said. “She won’t believe you until it has faded. I could feed off the energy she absorbed, but I have to have her blood too. I can take most of it, if you’ll let me.”

  “No,” I said. “I like it.”

  Pierce took a step toward me. We were already so close that I had to back up to keep from falling. “LeKrista, I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me.”

  I shook my head. “You let her grab you and you kissed her.”

  “No, Staci, she kissed me.” He took another step and forced me back.

  “No.”

  “Yes.” Another step.

  “Stop that,” I said, and planted my feet. No more moving, no more getting closer to Roman. “You kissed her.”

  Pierce sighed. “Fine. I kissed her. And now, I’m going to kiss you.”

  I didn’t have time to protest. Pierce’s lips closed over mine in a kiss that was hard and full. I tasted Perdita on him and hot, angry tears sprung from my eyes. My anger rose, but it was quickly cut off when something bit into my right wrist and latched on. I pulled away from Pierce to look down.

  “What did you do that for?” I said, but before I got the words all the way out, my tongue turned heavy and thick and I dropped to the floor, convulsing while Roman
fed from my wrist. I felt him pull the energy from me, and I knew the moment my eyes went back to normal because everything went fuzzy before it faded to black.

  The first thing I noticed was how badly everything hurt. Every muscle in my body ached all the way to the bone and my tongue felt like I’d bit it off. I stuck it out and touched it with my finger.

  Still there.

  There was an arm around my waist and a body curled up around mine, even though I was lying on my back. “Off,” I said, and my voice was hoarse and scratchy. I needed water. Bad.

  The body jerked awake and jostled me in the process. I whimpered in pain.

  “I’m sorry, Stace. I was trying not to fall asleep.”

  “Get off me,” I whispered, because it hurt too much to speak. “I’m thirsty. Help me.”

  Pierce was off the bed and around to my side in record time. He helped me to my feet, a slow and arduous process that almost wasn’t worth the effort, and we walked the few feet to the bathroom sink with me hanging off his hip like a baby.

  “LeKrista, there are a few things you need to know,” Pierce said, “before we get to the bathroom and the mirror. There have been some changes. I don’t really know how to tell you except to let you see for yourself.”

  I panicked. I pushed away from Pierce and fell to my knees, jostling every sore place in my body. I cried out in pain, but pushed myself up and teetered again before Pierce caught me. I tried to get away from him, but he held tight, gripping the sore muscles in my arms to still me.

  “LeKrista, you have to calm down,” he said soothingly like you would to a child. “LeKrista.” I whimpered and fought, but soon gave up because I knew it was no use. He wasn’t going to let me go. “Baby, take a deep breath and calm down.”

  I tried, but it hurt, so I did my best. Pierce kept looking at me with worried eyes and I knew my own eyes were wild. I glanced at the bathroom door, then back to Pierce, then to the bathroom door, but we just stood there as Pierce tried to calm me. When I guess I was as calm as he knew he would get me, he put an arm around my back and scooped me up to carry me into the bathroom. I didn’t protest. He smelled so good that I had a sudden flashback. I could smell the blood pumping under his skin.

  Pierce set me so my feet touched the cool tile floor, but he supported the majority of my weight. I closed my eyes when he turned me to the mirror and tried to breathe around the tightness in my chest. I knew what I’d done. I’d absorbed all of Perdita’s energy and all of Perdita’s being into my own body and I knew that I’d taken on characteristics of her, but what? What had happened to me? Was I a vampire now? Half vampire? Was there such a thing? I didn’t know and I was afraid to find out.

  “Staci, you’ll have to look eventually.”

  Tears burned at the corners of my eyes. “Am I still me?” I asked.

  “Yeah, baby. You’re still you, and I still love you, no matter what. Remember that.”

  I turned and didn’t open my eyes until I knew I was looking full at Pierce and not in the mirror. When I looked at him, there was such a look of love in his eyes that it made me want to cry. He hadn’t looked at me like that in a long time. It was “I love you,” without words. I didn’t need to ask any more questions. Pierce tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, playing with the end of it like he liked the way it felt between his fingers.

  “Look,” he said, and helped me turn around.

  My eyes were closed again by the time I got turned around and my breathing had become erratic once more. I felt a tremor run up my spine, a tic that made me shiver, and I took a deep breath. My eyes opened and it took me a moment to make sense of what I saw.

  I was still me. I had my face, my nose, my bone structure, none of that had changde. I still had my honey skin tone, but my skin was different, smoother, more lush. My eyes had a light to them that hadn’t been there before, and there was something else. My face looked thinner, not as full as it had been, like I’d lost weight or something. I looked down at my body and realized that was indeed what had happened. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been unconscious, but I knew it wasn’t long enough to lose the ten pounds I knew were gone.

  “Ohmigod,” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” Pierce said. “See, it’s not bad. It’s just different. It’s good. I like it, but I’ll always love you, no matter what.” He wrapped his arms around me and rested his chin on my shoulder. “I love you Staci.”

  “I love you too.”

  He dropped down to one knee and I didn’t realize what he was doing until a diamond sparkled in his hand.

  “StaciDoll, I love you. Will you marry me?”

  Tears filled my eyes and I shook my head. “No.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Pierce didn’t stay. I spent three more days in bed because it hurt too much to move, which meant I added three more days to my “vacation”. Miranda, Tate, Adelina, and Calliope came to visit with me, but they never stayed long. I think they were afraid of me, and I couldn’t blame them. I had every memory of what had happened and it scared me too.

  On the morning we were ready to leave, Miranda came to the room to talk to me.

  “I told Lady Xiomara what happened,” she told me without preamble. “She wants to see you first thing when you get back. I told her about your condition, but she’s insistent.”

  I nodded.

  “Truth is,” Miranda continued, “there hasn’t been one with your kind of power in a long time. You’re so strong that it scares them. Well, it scares her, really.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You’re strong enough to take her place when your power is fully controlled. You don’t need any cultivating, because it all came to you at once. All you need is training. Most of it will come to you as you use it.” She shook her head. “Personally, I think it’s good. Xiomara needs to be unseated. It’s time for her reign to end.”

  “You make it sound like a dictatorship.”

  “Yeah,” Miranda said. “That’s about it. She dictates. Everyone else does what she says.”

  “What if I don’t want to be High Queen of the Round Table,” I asked.

  “I don’t think you’ll have a choice. She’ll let you skate by with a lot just because she’s afraid you’ll take her seat, but there will come a day when she will challenge you, and just like the other night, you won’t back down because of anger or pride or whatever reason. Not saying I think you’re prideful, but it has happened before. With power like that, by then you’ll defeat her and it won’t be hard.”

  I closed my eyes and sank down onto the sofa in front of the fire. After a very long moment, Miranda stood and left.

  The night we left, I left Roman’s book on the sofa and left with only the clothes I’d come with and Perdita’s dress. I had a twisted fascination with it.

  Roman flew with us into Charleston, but stayed on the plane when Miranda, Tate, Gavlin and I got off. Miranda protested that they didn’t need a plane, but I begged her to come along, and we all drove in a rental car to Vamp-Lightenment. Lady Xiomara and her council were waiting for us in their chamber deep underground.

  “Well,” Lady Xiomara said. “You’ve accepted your gift, I see.” He tone was strangely neutral, not at all like the voice she’d used when I met her, and I assumed it was to do with her not wanting to make me angry. “I’m told you’re very powerful.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Yes? You believe you’re very powerful?”

  “I only know that, what I did had to mean I’m more powerful than the vampire, and I know she had power. I have it now.”

  “Well,” she said after a moment, “I’m assigning you to Miranda. She will teach you what you need to know, she and Gavlin, and will help you take care of the necessary paperwork.” The smile she gave me wasn’t a kind one. “Oh yes,” she added, assuming I was shocked. I wasn’t. “There’s paperwork.”

  She dismissed us before I could ask any more questions, but I wouldn’t have asked her anyway. The
sun was up by the time we were done with all that paperwork. Miranda and Tate escorted me out of the building to find Pierce leaning against his car, waiting for me.

  “I didn’t want you to think I’d abandoned you like you thought before,” he said, “but I needed a few days to accept...”

  I nodded my understanding.

  “We’ll wait inside for you,” Tate said, and she and Miranda walked back inside Vamp-Lightenment.

  “I don’t want you to think that I don’t want to marry you,” I told him, “because I want that more than anything.”

  “Then why did you say no?”

  “I can’t right now, Pierce. There are vampires trying to kill me. I don’t even know if I’ll be alive tomorrow. Then, of course, there’s still so much to work through from the break up before... And Roman will never-”

  “Fuck Roman.”

  “No thanks.” The words slipped out before I could catch them. “Sorry.” Pierce smirked, but it didn’t look like he wanted to. “We’ll work on it,” I said. “I don’t want to lose you. Just... It’s too much right now.”

  He nodded. “Do you need a ride home?” That wall went up behind his eyes and shut off all the emotion in his face.

  “No. I’m going to stay in town for a day or two.” There were only three more words to say as he walked away. “I love you.”

  He stopped and looked at me. “I love you too.” He said it with so much feeling I knew I’d never doubt that again.